Re: The fallacy of strengthened liar's paradox.

On Jan 1, 8:26 am, "R. Srinivasan" <sradh...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Lat us say Mr. X blurts out "This sentence is....." and exactly at
that point he drops dead. Can you now let us know what is the sentence
that Mr. X had in mind? The answer is we cannot be sure at all. All we
can say is that if Mr. X had no sentence in mind at the time of his
death, he was attempting to attribute some property to a non-existent
sentence.

Suppose Mr. X had a sentence in mind, but because of some
drug-induced state instead said "False this is sentence." What
does that tell us about the meaning of some other sentence?
Nothing. Even if the other sentence we wish to consider is
a reordering of the words of the first sentence.


The problem here is that we human beings can parse sentences only when
their words are read sequentially, which means that the informal
notion of "time" is important in understanding what sentences mean.

Syntax does not require time. It just requires order.


Keeoing this in mind, let us re-formulate the sentence in question in
an *exactly* equivalent manner as follows:

"This sentence, which has not yet been defined, is meaningless"

Now we can clearly agree that the above sentence attempts to attribute
the property of "meaninglessness" to a non-existent sentence.

I do not agree that the above sentence does not exist.


Conclusion: When somebody utters "This sentence is blah blah blah..."
then s(he) should have a *constructed* sentence in mind the moment
"sentence" is uttered.

A different syntax could put the word "sentence" at the end,
and then your objection goes away. Your objection depends
on English word order.


Marshall
.

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